This work represents an important development in the collaborative practice of Mitsuo Kano and the poet Makoto Ooka. Created in 1975, it is a livre-objet containing Ooka’s poetry collection Under the Sleepless Tossing of Planets and takes the unusual form of a large, vertically oriented boxed object. Its appearance suggests not so much a container for a book as a vessel designed to hold language itself.Under the Sleepless Tossing of Planets includes six poems written between 1968 and 1974, concluding with the long prose poem “Spiral City.” Originally published in the magazine Sogetsu in 1972, “Spiral City” was later issued as a privately printed edition limited to ninety-seven copies and was designated by Shuzo Takiguchi as one volume in the Hisatsu Sokyo (“Secret Grass-Mad Books”) series.
The collaboration between Kano and Ooka can be traced back to Ship for Ararat – Honey of the Sky, produced around 1970. In that work, Ooka’s unpublished poetry collection Sand Beak: Turning Liquid was completely sealed within the object, making it impossible to read without dismantling the box itself. In contrast, in the present work the poetry collection is precisely housed within the box, yet can actually be removed and read. From an inaccessible, closed book to one that can be held and opened, this shift reveals a new stage in the collaborative relationship between the two artists.